


Some Things Which Occurred in the Garden on the Rue Plumet

by melannen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fauchelevent Survives, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Alternate Universe - Valjean Survives, Baby Animals, Canon Era, Depression, Domesticity, F/F, Face Squirrels, Families of Choice, Fluff, Gen, Grumpy Old Men, Hats, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-human POV, Outdoor Sex, Post-Barricade, Victor Hugo Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This fic contains Old Men and squirrels.</p><p>...nope, that's basically it. That's the fic. Old men and squirrels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Autumn and Winter are Permitted to Pass, but Spring is Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madame_le_maire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_le_maire/gifts).



> Dear recipient, I couldn't decide on which of your excellent prompts was best so I just decided to incoherently write them all at once. Sorry.
> 
> Dear people not involved in the exchange who have stumbled on this: this story is at least 75% in-joke by volume. It may make no sense. Sorry.
> 
> Thanks to drcalvin for beta-reading the first third or so of this! All the remaining mistakes are mine.

Valjean first noticed Javert's whiskers early in the spring.

Or, rather, he first noticed the Spring because of the whiskers. This man, who, whenever his life allowed it, had taken no greater pleasure than to walk among the fields and forests, to watch the sun rise in the city, to help a garden grow, had spent all of the previous autumn and winter counting down the days until Cosette would leave him; since her marriage, on the sixteenth of February, he had lived only for the hour each day when he might visit her - or, rather, had simply waited until the hour each day when he would live. The weather encroached upon his awareness only so much as to determine whether umbrellas must be carried to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire; the slow transformation of the garden from its black and shining winter garb to the first careful green fuzz of spring was entirely lost to him. 

If old Father Fauchelevent had not used every trick he had learned, in ten years' intimate acquaintance, to induce him to do so, he likely would not even have roused himself to eat.

And, Fauchelevent thought grimly to himself, without his weekly cajoling, the Inspector would likely have been neglecting to eat as well. He had not thought, at his advanced age, hardly able to walk down the stairs from his own front-door, that he would find himself acting as nurse-maid to two grown men scarcely younger than himself; and yet, since the unrest of the previous June, the duty had presented itself to him. He had sat up for a night and a day, cloaked in fear, after Valjean had gone to the barricade; the infirmity of his joints had kept him from joining his friend, but had not kept him from worry. So he had been waiting, still, in the porter's chair on the ground floor of the little house on the Rue de l'Homme Armé, when his friend had returned, covered in blood and muck and horror, and scarcely offered him a nod before running up the stairs where he, with legs stiff from a night and a day of waiting, could not follow with any speed.

Instead he had limped to the front door, which still stood half-open, in order to close it against the damp wind. Instead he seen an old acquaintance from their days in M-sur-M, Inspector Javert, standing in the light of the street-lamp, looking as if he were a ship about to go down in a storm, and had chided Javert into helping an old man up the stairs to his parlor; then he had fed him tea, and Cosette's sugar biscuits, until the whole strange, sad story of a convict named Jean Valjean and a policeman named Javert had been told.

Javert had left no. 7 the next morning before Cosette awoke, unaccompanied by Valjean ("Jean Valjean indeed!" harrumphed Fauchelevent,) but with a standing invitation to return for a weekly visit, and the somewhat confused idea - both confusion and idea rather aided and abetted by Fauchelevent - that his duty and conscience both required that he take it upon himself, alone, to enforce a sort of parole as regarded himself and the old convict.

"And we'll be moving back to the Rue Plumet, my leg can no longer take the stairs here at any rate," Fauchelevent informed him as a parting gift. "No. 55: you will remember. It will look as if the place is unoccupied, if you come in at the front, but you will not let that stop you, I am sure."

Valjean, on being informed of their return to the Rue Plumet, was somewhat less obliging. "The stairs here are quite difficult for me," Fauchelevent reminded him; "And, after all, you cannot claim that we need to fear robbery, not if a police inspector is to be a frequent visitor." If his reasons had not so much to do with his knee as with his hatred for the gloom that had descended on the little family since its hasty departure, he did not say so.

Valjean himself had said very little that night, though he had sluiced the worst of the grime from himself with water warmed by the kettle, and then stood, silently, and listened, as Javert poured out a lifetime's confession and doubt, his head bowed to the table, seeming to see neither of them there.

"What he said - that I am - that I am Jean Valjean - it does not bother you?" Valjean asked, instead of continuing the discussion of addresses.

"Jean," Fauchelevent said to him, with infinite patience and tenderness, "Did you truly think that, in ten years, no-one had told me before? Jean Valjean. Indeed."

And so the household - Fauchelevent, Valjean, Cosette, Toussaint, and all - returned to the house in the Rue Plumet, and Javert came to visit them, for one punctual hour a week, to share a meal with Fauchelevent and stare, with undecipherable emotion in his deep-set eyes, over his coat-collar at Valjean. Valjean had conceded to the concept of 'guests' so far as to clear a walk-way through the garden from the front door to the front gate, and to force the twisted, rusting gate into some semblance of function, but once he was aware of the road from the Rue Babylone, Javert strongly preferred that route. It allowed him to visit the old men in the gate-house without having to brave the femininity of Cosette's domain, so that Cosette, floating as she was in the glory of knowing that Marius lived and would see her again, soon forgot entirely about the gentleman, barely visible as more than a hat, a coat-collar, and a pair of very fierce sideburns which had once come to visit her father.

For some weeks, the hat, the coat-collar, and the sideburns were all that Valjean or Fauchelevent saw either: until on a very hot day in July, shortly after the doctor had declared that Marius would, more likely than not, survive, he was finally induced to remove the hat and the coat, and the sideburns removed themselves as well: they were, not whiskers, but two squirrels of the same reddish-gray color as his hair, which had been concealed under his hat, only their tails extending along the edges of his face.

Now, revealed by the removal of the hat, they clambered down, one along each shoulder, until they stood in an attitude of attention on the table, awaiting their orders. "Yes," the Inspector told them. "You may go off-duty. We have one hour exactly: I imagine you will enjoy the garden here." They bobbed their heads to him in unison, over folded paws, and then scampered out the open window. They could be seen, a moment later, chasing each other up a drain-pipe, in a torrent like russet-red water.

After that, the Inspector always took off his coat and hat on entering the gate-house, and the window was always left open at least half a handspan, even in the rain or wind, for the convenience of off-duty police agents. 

Javert, his face bare in the evening light, was another creature entirely than the Inspector who faced the world from the interior of his overcoat, with his assistants always hidden yet on guard: or, perhaps, it was not the removal of the hat and coat that made the change, but rather that their removal was an outward sign of an interior change that, slowly happening over the course of weeks, had awakened the Inspector like a dry old seed long soaked in water.

Whatever it was, he seemed hardly the same man: he would converse freely with them both, and though his questions about their lives, and his stories of police-work that suddenly shifted between diffidently awkward and too passionate, still had the air of a man experimenting with an entirely new skill, and though Valjean's conversation, if more practiced, was scarcely less awkward, Fauchelevent could chatter enough to cover for them both. Toward the end of August - Fauchelevent marked the date - Javert actually laughed: it was neither a pleasant sound nor a kind one, but it was still merry, and there was something of freedom in it. And, wonder of wonders, Valjean smiled in response, and Cosette not even in the same room!

In September Marius Pontmercy was declared out of danger, and Valjean's evening pilgrimages to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire became day-long visits, accompanied by Cosette. On their return, he would leave Cosette in her sitting-room with a merry goodnight, and then return to the gatehouse to sit in a black mood, eat the dinner that Fauchelevent forced upon, and stare at the silver candlesticks he had placed on the mantel, or at the crucifix that was Fauchelevent's memento of the convent. Fauchelevent, if he tried his utmost, could sometimes force a few words from him: but it was only on the nights of Javert's visits that Valjean showed any true animation.

Javert took to coming, as the year turned toward autumn, with a bottle of wine better than what any of them would buy for themselves, or a bowl of fresh pears bought at the market, or a dozen sweet cakes of a type he had learned that Valjean particularly liked. Valjean would eat them even if he had eaten nothing else that evening, perhaps out of a sense of duty toward a guest, perhaps because he had forgotten not to. Some days Javert would extend his visits via the mechanism of his agents, who would return punctually after their hour's frolic in the garden, to chatter their report to him; whereupon he would ask if he might stay a little longer, as his rooms were in a quarter with few gardens, and none so interesting for squirrels as that at the Rue Plumet. After awhile, they learned on their own to return later and later every week.

This stratagem worked to some extent. During Javert's visits, which even now ended more often than not in Javert standing up in outrage at something Valjean had asserted about the relations of man to man or the morality of the world, jamming his hat on his head, whistling for his squirrels, and storming majestically down the passageway - during that time Valjean seemed, if not happy, then at least livelier: And exactly one week later, no matter how stormy the argument, Javert would reappear, as punctual as ever, remove his hat and coat, bit adieu to his assistants, and sit down at the table, prepared again to listen and to think.

As an excuse for staying beyond the one-hour term of the parole, the squirrels' need for air and exercise worked well enough, until the night in December (quite by chance, the day after the date had been set for a wedding) when, rather than run out for their constitutional, the squirrels instead walked cautiously up to Valjean, and then, seeing his lack of reaction, curled themselves on his shoulders, their tails securely wrapped like a furry scarf around his neck.

Valjean was entirely unsure what to do; he raised his hands toward his shoulders, dropped them again, and then said, with some of the severity he had been more accustomed to as a mayor than as a father, "What is this, Javert?"

"They've never done that before," Javert replied, with the dispassionate curiosity of a detective. "But it is their evening off: they may do as they wish, within the bounds of the law. Perhaps it is for the warmth."

There was, in truth, a cold wind outside, and snow blowing: and though the room was warm enough, the fire kept high in deference to Fauchelevent's joints, there was still a chill in the air. Perhaps that was the only reason. Valjean lifted a hand again, but this time raised it - as if unconsciously - to stroke the soft fur of a squirrel's head. It chirred at him, and then licked a finger.

Which was all very well, but it made it quite obvious that there was no reason for Javert to remain at the table, talking, late into the night, except that he wished to be there: especially when he stayed so long after dark that Fauchelevent would not let him return to his apartment, and he slept in a chair by the fire, the squirrels spread across his lap.

"What is the matter with him?" Javert hissed to Fauchelevent in the next morning, when Valjean had already gone to the house to get Cosette prepared for their visit, and he was arranging himself in his coat and hat. "Nothing I do - shall I stop coming? Perhaps I am--"

"No!" Fauchelevent replied in haste, barely stopping himself from grabbing him by the sleeve. "That is the one thing you must not do. No, it is not that - it is - his daughter is getting married, and he has built his life so much around her that I do not that think that he can see anything beyond her leaving."

Javert tried to call to mind the sad but radiant creature he had met only twice, and in passing: the mysterious female who occupied the main house, with her maidservant, and, when his knee could take the stairs, Fauchelevent in the second-floor bedroom. "That is his daughter?" he asked, in some surprise. He had never asked about her, nor even allowed himself to be curious, feeling, somehow, that she was by rights entirely outside of his jurisdiction.

"Well, he claimed her as his granddaughter, but I think - you understand that I spent some time in the hospital, there - I think she must be Fantine's child."

"Fantine's child!" Javert said, reeling back as if he had been struck, and then, in the mutter to himself - or perhaps to the other occupants of his hat - that he had nearly lost the habit of when at the Rue Plumet, "Of course it is Fantine's child. Who else would it be?"

One week later, he came into the gatehouse and dropped a small box on the table; it landed with a rattling sound. "Do either of you know how to play dominoes?" he asked, with an air of grim purpose.

"Dominoes!" said Valjean, with some amazement. "When would I have learned to play dominoes?"

"That," said Javert, opening the box and beginning to spread the pieces on the table, "Is exactly what I said to the prefect today. But, apparently, if one wishes to gain the trust of the men of the Barriéres, one must know how to play dominoes, and thus it is my duty. We shall learn together."

So it continued, December into January into February, one dark bleak winter, Valjean with each week that passed growing merrier when with Cosette, and grimmer with the two men who knew his secrets, until they counted it enough of a victory not to see him smile, but merely to hear him speak.

And so it happened that in February, the week after Cosette was married, Valjean returned from an evening visit to the Baroness de Pontmercy only very shortly before the Inspector left; and so it happened that, having seen him to the door, Valjean turned to Fauchelevent and said, quite blankly, the first words he had said in that house in two days: "He has sideburns. Of his own." And indeed he had: they were not, yet, as luxuriant as they appeared when the squirrels were secure under his hat; but they were very clearly there, even without animal assistance, if perhaps more visibly gray than before.

"Oh! You have noticed at last, have you?" replied Fauchelevent; "Well, I imagine he does so every year at this time. It is, after all, very nearly spring," he said gently, to Valjean's furrowed brow. "Even the most reliable of police agents are not always reliable in the spring."


	2. That Which Dwells Below the Inspector's Hat and Above His Collar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The squirrels went by the names of _Droit_ , which means Right, because she always rode on his right side; and _Devoir_ , which means Duty, because Duty should always be the ruling passion of a man's, or a police squirrel's, life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did both far too much and not nearly enough squirrel research for this and the following chapters, but note that basically everything in here is more-or-less attested in the literature as having occurred at least once among either wild or pet _Sciurus vulgaris_.

The squirrels went by the names of _Droit_ , which means Right, because she always rode on his right side; and _Devoir_ , which means Duty, because Duty should always be the ruling passion of a man's, or a police squirrel's, life. 

When Javert, on occasion, had reason to introduce them in that manner, he was often greeted with laughter on the revelation of Devoir's name, at least until the laughter was rapidly quelled by the force of his scowl. For a long time he had not understood why that name should evoke such a general reaction; though, having lately learned to allow himself to think of such things, he might now have in extremity admitted - if pressed - that there was reason for the general public to be incredulous at the idea of an Inspector of the Paris police placing Duty on the same level as Right.

All the same, Devoir and Droit were equals in every way. They were both females - Javert having found males comparatively unreliable, and insufficiently dedicated to the cause of righteousness - trained as a pair since kitttenhood in the purposes of the law. They were partners, working seamlessly together during the day, playing together when off-duty, and sleeping together at night, curled up in the Inspector's up-turned hat. They were entirely devoted, first to their Inspector, second to each other, and third to the law. Had Javert earlier been aware that such was the order of their priorities, rather than the reverse, he might have rebuked them for it - but, then again, he might not, having been known to make exceptions for the frailties of their nature even when he made such exceptions for none other, and of late he had been known, on a rare occasion, to place such considerations in a different rank, himself.

They accepted without complaint their lives, within the confines of a hat and under the constraints of service to the law, punctuated only by the occasional evening off, and, more frequently, a wild and joyous thief-chase over the roofs of Paris, or an investigatory expedition between the bars of a window or through an attic-hole into a locked house. 

Born and bred Parisiennes, the daughters and granddaughters of police squirrels, they were accustomed to the dark and Spartan second-floor apartment where they lived with their Inspector, and though they had all the same quickly grown very fond of their weekly outing in the acre of walled wilderness in the Rue Plumet, and the small warm house inhabited by the men who let their Inspector smile and fed them roasted chest-nuts, they would, perhaps, have as easily accepted its loss, and they allowed its walls, and walls of the gardens that lined the walk to the Rue Babylone, as the natural limits of their territory. They were a unit complete in themselves and needing no other - except, sometimes, for a single evening early in the spring.

On said evening in early spring, at the end of a clear February day, their Inspector had given them a very severe look as soon as he removed his hat. "Yes, I know it's time," he told them. "Your inability to go ten minutes without getting yourselves tangled in my hair was evidence enough - well, this is as good a year for it as any other, and better than some. Do as you need to do, but I will expect you on duty by morning."

They were off like a chain-shot as soon as they were dismissed, tumbling chaotically over and around each other as they dashed up the trunk of the great chestnut tree in the garden, and then set off across the rooftops and treetops of the Faubourg Saint Germain. The wild, ingrown garden at the Rue Plumet was nice enough, but it was _theirs_ , and even if they only visited one afternoon a week, every other squirrel in the neighborhood gave the place a wide berth out of learned respect.

Among the trees of the gardens of the Luxembourg, however, dwelt a vast population of squirrels, grown fat and sleek on the leavings of human picnickers, but, also, grown clever and canny from having to live under the feet, and over the heads, of that constant stream of humans and their dogs.

Droit and Devoir respected cleverness above all, and especially the cleverness of those who could outwit humans and canines - they had once made a several-months' project, in which they took great pride, of tormenting a small, stupid white creature that consisted mostly of rolls of fat, until it simply refused to walk into the park any more. Yes, the Luxembourg gardens, with their anciently urban squirrel population, and being not so very far from the Rue Plumet in a straight line as a squirrel goes, suited their purposes admirably.

For all that it was not so very far, it took them nearly an hour to make the trip, for the spring air had got into their blood, and they distracted each other, chase-as-chase can, up and down the trees and around the ridgepoles, zig-zagging across gardens and switchbacking reckless on roofs, alternating from pursuer to pursued as their hearts desired, pausing only to avoid startling horses in the street (which was a disruption of public order, and therefore unthinkable) and to wrestle with each other after planned unexpected meetings around the back of chimney-pots.

In some years, when their Inspector could not spare them, this was enough - they satisfied themselves well enough with each other, for they _had_ each other, always, and they had the chase, and wrestling matches until they were satiated, and sleeping curled-up in a hat as close as two souls sharing one fur; but this year, their Inspector had given them leave; and this year, they had an acre of untrammeled, tangled wild, dense with mushrooms and nut-trees, to call their own; and so on that one day in spring, they went to the Jardins du Luxembourg.

By the time they got there they had quite exhausted themselves, and they found an unoccupied tree with a comfortable fork, and slept the sleep of an unstained conscience, Droit with her tail wrapped around Devoir's head, and Devoir with her tail around Droit's. When they woke half an hour later, they found an excellent assortment of fit, bright-eyed, high-tufted males already awaiting their pleasure. They looked at each other, plotting their campaign together as carefully as they would have plotted any surveillance of a suspect or capture of a fleeing criminal, and then Droit tossed her head and flicked her tail at a reddish-gray male with the most extravagant ear-tufts, and took off full-speed down the tree's trunk, him in hot pursuit.

Devoir, who had a more refined taste in such matters, waited to see who remained, and then gave a cry of challenge and set out across the tree-tops in the most intricate route she could plot, to see who, if any, would be able to keep up with her.

As to what followed - well, if we shall respect the privacy of a pair of virgins in their marriage-bed, so much the more shall we respect the privacy of such innocent beings as these, who do not even have the knowledge of shame to draw about their amours.

Suffice it to say that, as is the way with such creatures, the passion that burned hot that night was quite forgotten by the next day's light: their Inspector woke at dawn as usual, and found them tangled together as always snug in their hat; with a tired fondness he said, "So, I am to assume that _those_ affairs are handled for another year, yes?'" and they did not even justify such an obvious statement with an answer, only haughtily took their usual positions ready for duty.


	3. How Jean Valjean Was Forced To Live In His Own House

For some weeks, Droit and Devoir continued to act as their Inspector's agents in the enforcement of the law, as quick and dextrous as ever; however, by the middle of March, while still dextrous, they were both rather less quick than they had been, and Droit, in particular, had become rather disinclined to leave the hat in the mornings, and rather too eager to return in the evening.

Javert walked into gatehouse at the Rue Plumet carrying his hat rather than wearing it one sunny, unseasonably warm afternoon; he placed it on the table and lifted the squirrels out one by one, when they did not climb out on their own.

"Yes, I know," he said to them: "You are tired, and you only want a warm drey to nest in: you may have your month off beginning tomorrow, I have planned for it." His whiskers had now grown out to nearly the length they appeared when Droit and Devoir were on the job. "Until then, run, play. You will be glad enough for the freedom to do so, when you have lost it."

The squirrels were unimpressed, but he stared them down, and after a short consultation they ran off into the darkness of the house - though their jumps were slightly less lofty than usual, as a consequence of which they both found it necessary to use the top of Valjean's head as a stepping-stone on their way to the rafters. Valjean, who had been sunk into a stupor and had not even noted Javert's entrance, jerked to alertness just in time to catch Javert's eye.

"I have been spoiling them," Javert told him, ruefully but not regretfully. "Too many chestnuts and not enough exercise; they grow fat and lazy, because I have grown soft." 

"Javert--" Valjean began, and then stopped.

"Ah! So you do still talk," replied Javert.

"Surely--" Valjean shook his head. "I know you do not know country ways, but surely you are aware that they are not simply getting fat from too many nuts?"

Javert lowered himself into the chair across from Valjean's. "They will be kittening soon, Valjean. I am not a _complete_ imbecile; I approved the plan when they proposed it. They are also, however, growing fat and lazy. Were they obliged to fend for themselves, rather than having honorable employment, they would not have been offered a month off with all the food they could ask for."

A somewhat rude chittering answered him from the direction of the roof-beams. " _And_ they grow disrespectful," Javert added with a shake of his head. "I fear for their daughters' training."

What response there might have been to this was lost to history, because Fauchelevent appeared in the doorway of the gatehouse, his cane in one hand and a basket of supper in the other, and Valjean and Javert both rose to help him. The question of nuts was abandoned for some hours in favor of the familiar sound of Fauchelevent's chatter.

However, the evening, as evenings tend to do even when accompanied by wine, eventually drew to its end, and Javert rose to whistle for his agents. For the first time, they did not come. He waited, and whistled again. They did not come. Valjean and Fauchelevent glanced at each other, unsure how to respond to the unthinkable.

"Javert--" began Fauchelevent. "We can search the garden - I am sure that--"

"They will come," said Javert, standing rigidly, his hands fisted in his jacket, his chin descending inexorably into the shelter of his coat-collar. "It is only that parenthood gives them odd notions, sometimes. No-one dies of such things. Droit!" he called. "Devoir!"

"I will get a torch," Fauchelevent said, levering himself out of his chair in the direction of his cane.

"Wait," Valjean said, raising one hand. "Be silent, both of you."

In the silence could be heard the rumble of carriages in the distant street, a wind sighing along the walled passageway, a crackle from the fireplace, and then - a very quiet scuffling sound, from the ceiling directly above them.

"Do you have rats?" Fauchelevent after a moment.

"No," replied Valjean, and tilted the lamp to cast light directly above them, so that a juncture in the roof-beams was illuminated. A small face, its ear-tufts showing blood-red in the light, scolded down at them.

"Devoir!" said Javert. "You come down immediately."

She just scolded at him again.

"I know your month of leave technically started tonight. Your month of leave to be spent in your drey, in my old hat, at home, which we have already prepared for you."

She flicked her tail at him and ran along the length of the beam; Valjean followed her with the light from the lamp, and they saw, wedged into the space where the beam met the slant of the roof, a bundle of dark cloth.

"What is that?" Fauchelevent inquired.

"It's my old cap," said Valjean, "The one you won't let me wear any more."

"And how did it get up there?" he asked, although the answer to this question was self-evident, as Devoir tucked herself into its folds, only bright eyes and ear-tufts still visible.

"I told you to come down from there immediately," repeated Javert. "To begin with, you have stolen this kind gentleman's hat, which is a crime, and beneath you."

She only flashed her eyes at him, and disappeared behind the brim. "Parenthood," said Javert, "It is clear, it makes one intractable: I do not see why anyone bothers."

The beam of the light wavered, and there was a muffled choking sound coming from Valjean's direction.

"Are you ill?" Javert asked, rather more brusquely than he intended, but then the source of the unfamiliar sound became clear: he was laughing. Javert and Fauchelevent both stared at him, quite lost for words.

"They may keep the hat," Valjean said, when he had caught his breath. "Call it my gift to them, to start a new life."

They kept staring, but that was all he said. "Well," muttered Javert, who had been quite derailed from his earlier thoughts, "The hat aside, they cannot stay there."

"I do not object," answered Valjean.

"I object entirely," the Inspector replied; "It is inconsiderate and precarious and, supposing they plan to stay up there for the next month, rather than in my own old hat, it is unsafe for the kits; I don't know what they were thinking. Devoir! Recall yourself! I will dock your pay - and I don't care that Fauchelevent has let you stash away enough treats to last you a year, you are still my agents."

Devoir offered him the bare flick of a tail above the brim: that was all.

Javert stared up at them, and then grimly wedged his own hat onto his head. "I suppose I shall have to climb up there and carry them down myself."

"How?" asked Fauchelevent, pragmatically. "We have no ladder tall enough, even for you."

Javert considered his options. "If we moved the table, and stacked a chair onto it?"

Valjean, who had said nothing since stating his gift of the hat, silently helped to drag the table and then lifted a chair onto it; when that proved just insufficient, he brought a small three-legged stool to add to the stack, and then stood on the table beside Javert to better hold the light. 

This raised Javert to a level from which he could pull down the brim and see into the cap; he was rewarded with a nip to the finger, which he pulled back with such suddenness that the leg of the stool slipped, and then went through the straw seat of the chair, sending the chair itself off-balance and them all in danger of toppling off the table entirely. Javert quite thoroughly lost his footing; but in the same instant there was a loud crash and the room went dark as Valjean dropped the lamp, which went out, and caught Javert in his arms before he could suffer injury to anything but his dignity: his hat went rolling unheeded into a corner.

"You seem to have bad luck around edifices built of old furniture," Valjean told him gravely, and then set him on the floor as if he weighed no more than a sack of flour. "Perhaps you should avoid them in future."

He readjusted chair and stool so that the legs had a more solid footing, and then climbed up himself, though his head was somewhat below the level of the cap.

Devoir reappeared and scolded him, but he bared his teeth and hissed at her, and she backed up, just out of reach, enough for him to lift the entire cap down, contents and all, cradled in two large gentle hands. "I see why they would not come down," he said, as he handed the hat carefully to Javert.

Inside it was Droit, who gazed up at him in limpid innocence, and three tiny, bald, blind squirrel kits, still searching for their first milk.

"Oh," said Javert. "That was poorly-timed, Droit."

Devoir landed quite suddenly on his shoulder, and then ran down his arm to stand over the cap, saying very clearly: and what do you plan to do about this, Inspector?

He sat down, and laid the cap on his lap. "I suppose they will have to stay here," he said, after a moment. "I can't carry them across Paris, at night, like this."

"Of course they'll stay here!" declared old Fauchelevent. "And why shouldn't they? A much nicer place than some empty second-story apartment I am sure." He peered over Javert's shoulder at the new parent. "Perhaps a box on a shelf would be wiser than a roof-beam, though, Droit, do you think?"

Such a box was procured from the basement, and the hat settled into it and placed on a high shelf near the fire, displacing a copy of _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ which Fauchelevent had acquired in a fit of erudition, and then never read. The next morning, there were another three squirrel kits, and Devoir was as smug as her partner.

Javert retrieved his hat from its dusty corner with resignation. "I suppose you are both resolved to stay here," he said. They certainly made no motion to leave their new drey. "And I will be obliged to visit you here twice every day to begin their training, which will be a matter of extreme inconvenience to me--"

"Don't be foolish," Fauchelevent said. "If they are to stay here, you may as well join them."

Javert gave him a flat stare.

"There is a large house on the other side of this courtyard," Fauchelevent reminded him, "which is entirely unoccupied, except when I sleep in one of the arm-chairs for my back. If you were to stay in the gate-house to be with the kits, Jean would obviously be forced, as a courtesy to you, to at long last sleep in the main house, where there is a feather-bed waiting for him, which even Cosette could not persuade him to do."

Javert stared at him, and said, depthless pain in his voice, "I see. Then you leave me no choice but to stay."


	4. The Remembrance of Lost Time

One afternoon - it was an early day in April, already warm, but still fresh, a day when the sun itself rejoiced in the youth of the year - Javert came back to the Rue Plumet in the middle of his workday, in need of assistance: there was a matter of some counterfeit coins, and without the aid of one of his agents in discerning small differences in density between the coins, the time required for the investigation would be increased at least threefold.

The kits did not distinguish between their mothers, and, though still blind, being old enough to go some time between feedings, were left with only Devoir while Droit took her shift with the Inspector.

Fauchelevent and Valjean had become quite accustomed to this over the last few weeks - it seemed that the agents' month's leave for motherhood contained an exception for police emergencies. Fauchelevent saw them off, and then sent Valjean on his visit to the Pontmercys, with a stern reminder to _use_ his umbrella this time, if a sudden spring shower should occur on the way. Then he stretched out in the front room of the summer house, his bad leg in a sunbeam and the window open to the breeze, a book he had no intention of reading open beside him.

He was kept from his anticipated nap, however, by the sound of unfamiliar voices in the garden. It jolted him back, in memory, to those last fateful weeks before the June revolt, when the household had lived in constant fear of robbery and prowlers in the night. With the revelation of Cosette's secret suitor, they had somehow forgotten that not all of the noises in the night could possibly have been him, and it occurred to Fauchelevent, quite suddenly, that he was in an isolated house on a empty street, an old man too lame to walk without a stick and alone in the house.

Almost alone, that was. He levered himself to his feet and whistled a tone he had recently learned, too quiet to be heard by any miscreants invading the garden, but loud enough to be picked up by keener ears, and soon enough Devoir appeared at the window, her head cocked in a question. Fauchelevent pointed her to the voices in the garden, and she bobbed in acknowledgement, and then was nothing but a red flash in the leaves. Soon enough she returned, ran up his arm, and chattered in his ear.

"Oh, is _that_ all," he replied with a chuckle. "Well, if that's the case, I suppose we should be kind enough to give them some warning. But not too much warning."

Devoir chattered disapprovingly.

"Well, perhaps you can handle your affairs in a single day," he told her, "but not everyone is so efficient, and after all, it is still springtime for them."

He had made some attempt - or, rather, by complaining loudly about his knees keeping him from the work, had cajoled Valjean into making some attempt - to bring at least some small part of the garden under the guidance of man; but there was still growth enough to block the view until he had come quite near the intruders, and for him to make a considerable noise of rustling that could be heard when he was still quite some way away.

Soon enough, however, he swept aside a curtain of rose-vines to reveal who else but Cosette and her young husband, well ensconced in a bower, garlanded and perfumed by the spring. Pontmercy was quite red in the face, and attempting with uncoordinated fingers to adjust his cravat to a more correct angle, apparently unaware that his shirt-tail was still hanging loose below his waistcoat.

Cosette was rosy-cheeked as well, but it seemed it was only joy and health that gave color to her cheeks; this innocent had merely thrown her skirt back over her legs, and found no need for shame in regards the conduct of her marriage. "Uncle Fauchelevent!" she exclaimed. "I hope we didn't disturb you - I only wanted to visit our garden again, and pretend it was still a bit of a secret."

Fauchelevent had already absolved Cosette of any sort of wrongdoing: it would be like attempting to cast blame upon a butterfly because it flew. Pontmercy, however, surely had been aware, when he timed this excursion, that at this very moment his father-in-law was sitting in a cold, dark basement room, waiting for the light and warmth that, today, would not come. Fauchelevent had never had occasion to meet the boy before, but had quite resolved to dislike him, and the circumstances of this meeting had only reinforced this judgement: he had it in mind to be rather severe.

"It's a squirrel, on your shoulder!" Cosette exclaimed, before he could speak. "How darling she is. I never knew you to keep squirrels, Uncle."

"Oh, she isn't mine, my dear," he said. "This is Devoir - she is Inspector Javert's agent - she is only staying here until the kits are weaned and she can be on duty again."

"There are kits?" said Cosette, already in raptures. "May we see them?"

"Wait," said Pontmercy, a hand on her shoulder. "Inspector Javert? What do you mean by that, old man?"

"Why, I mean Inspector Javert," said Fauchelevent. "He is a very old friend of her father's, he has known him since he was Mayor - and I suppose he is my friend as well; I have known him just as long. He has been to visit quite often - I believe you were introduced, Cosette?"

"The tall man with the whiskers?" she produced, after a moment's thought.

"But that can't be!" said Marius. "He is dead, I tell you! He was shot, at the barricade. Monsieur Jean shot him."

"Jean, shoot somebody!" Fauchelevent exclaimed. "No man is less likely to do so. You have met the man, surely? That ought to be enough to know, if you have any discernment at all."

"Of course Papa did not shoot Javert, don't be silly, Marius," Cosette said. "What are their names?"

"Their names?"

"The kits!"

"The kits! Well, they haven't been named yet," Fauchelevent told her. "I think Javert is hoping your father will do the honor - would you still like to see them? They are in the gate-house."

"Oh, yes!" Cosette said, in raptures, and ran ahead of him down the well-known path. Fauchelevent followed after, as fast as he could manage, and Marius trailed behind, trapped in thought, his cravat still quite untied, muttering something to himself about inspectors and mayors.

They reached the gate-house just in time to encounter Javert with Droit, returing via the other door from the Rue Babylone.

"Inspector," Fauchelevent said cheerfully, as Cosette peered into the box of kits, closely supervised by their mothers. "We have visitors. I believe you and Monsieur le Baron are already acquainted?"

Javert peered down at him. "He still owes me a pair of fisticuffs," he said.

"I will buy you a new pair," Pontmercy said, rather faintly, and then sat down in the nearest chair, the one that still had a hole in its seat. "I think - I begin to think that I have been wrong about a great many things."

Javert smiled at him with all of his teeth. "After awhile, one grows accustomed to the sensation," he said.

 

(Cosette ended up naming all the kits: Faith, Hope, Mercy, Charity, Grace and Love. Mercy and Charity, of course, turned out to be the two best suited in color and temperament to the police life, and after their mothers were permanently retired to the garden, inherited their positions, giving Javert an entirely different dilemma as regards introducing them. The others went to live in the big house with the Baroness - except for Hope, who attached himself to Valjean, and never again left his side, whether he slept any given night in the summer-house on the Rue Plumet or in his garden room at the Rue des Filles du Calvaire.)


End file.
